Painter Gareth Griffith grew up surrounded by the smells of Indian ink and turpentine belonging to his father Robin, a well-known illustrator for children’s Welsh language comics in the ’50s and ’60s.

Painter Gareth Griffith grew up surrounded by the smells of Indian ink and turpentine belonging to his father Robin, a well-known illustrator for children’s Welsh language comics in the ’50s and ’60s.

So it was hardly a surprise when a young Gareth turned his back on his police cadet training to study art at Liverpool College of Art.

During his subsequent 50-year career as an artist and art teacher at various schools and colleges in Liverpool, Jamaica and North Wales, he has passed his natural artistic expression on to his three sons.

Dafydd, 50, runs a design business in Milan; Ioan, 45, followed his father into art teaching at secondary school for 15 years until recently taking time out to study for an MA; and Morgan, 32, graduated from Norwich School of Art and Design in Norfolk and practised art in London and California before returning to Bethesda, where he now splits his time between working at Oriel Mostyn and creating his own art collages under the name Sonomano.

Now, at the age of 72, Griffith, is working together with Morgan and Ioan for their first collective exhibition Triad, which opens at St David’s Hall, Cardiff, this weekend.

“When the boys were little I wanted them to think it was natural to express themselves visually,” says Griffith. “I never pushed them into art but it evolved and when they finished school it seemed like a natural thing to do to go into art and design.

“Art is a language. People don’t realise one of the first basic instincts, even before language, is to make a mark. Mark-making is just as important as speech. I see art as a natural thing. I never, ever tried to teach them but I always encouraged them and let them go their own way.

“I was excited by the opportunity for the three of us to show together as a family for the first time in Cardiff. I had hoped my eldest son Dafydd would also be able to join us but unfortunately he was too busy to put work together. Although we are related and we all work in collage, we are totally different.”

At the heart of Triad is a retrospective of Griffith’s work which has developed significantly in the past 15 years since his retirement from teaching.

“I have no set working practise, everything I do is a direct, or indirect, response to things seen found and felt, explains the artist, who works from a studio in the garden of his home near Bethesda. “If there is a goal it is to make an image that has a personal resonance. It is important that it has a presence.

“My method of working is varied, I have always used found objects, if they lie around the studio for long enough they sometimes get under your skin, invention through recognition absorbs me.”

For Griffith, those objects could be anything from driftwood, plastic containers and worn lengths of nylon rope found on the beaches near his home to the dual-carriageway he regularly drives along which was the starting point for Early Morning on the A55. Even an old blue tent, which the family used for many a happy camping holiday when they lived in Jamaica in the early ’70s, was the inspiration for his 2011 Shelter series of installations, constructions and paintings based on the concept of places of shelter. The exhibition started at Galeri, Caernarfon with contributions from his three sons. When it was unveiled at Oriel Mostyn, Llandudno six months later, it had expanded with contributions from more than 40 artists from Wales and beyond, including Bedwyr Williams and Peter Finnemore. Last year the central painting from the exhibition, Blue Tent, won the Painting Prize in the Welsh Artist of the Year contest, adding to Griffith’s list of prizes and awards, which include two runner-up prizes at the National Eisteddfod and being selected as one of only a few Welsh artists to be included in the £10,000 prize international Mostyn Open 18, currently on show at Oriel Mostyn.

Blue Tent is included in Triad along with another of Griffith’s large-scale paintings. The Blackie – based on an aerial view of chairs assembled for a meeting at the Blackie Arts Centre in Liverpool – has an abstract quality.

“I’m drawn to the idea of looking down on things,” explains the artist, whose early painting of an aerial view of a North Wales swimming event, The Race, was purchased by Liverpool’s Walker Gallery while he was a still a student.

Son Ioan has taken his father’s Triad invitation as an opportunity to show his new collection of collages from his portfolio of work.

He says: “Some years ago I found an old box of 35mm slides in a junk shop that once belonged to a woman who travelled the world. I was interested in the images and who they belonged to. I worked with them and projected them and from there I started to scan them and incorporate them in my collage and print-making.”

Morgan’s recent work also features collage-based reinterpretations of old photographs.

He adds: “I was always encouraged to experiment and get messy with paint as a child. When we were young we were always in and out of private views. Our family holidays were based around museums and galleries and that has greatly influenced me.”

His newest work featured in Triad, Goodbye the Hoek of Holland, combines an old photograph of a ship being dragged along by a close-up of a capillary artery. Similarly The Sea of Galilee, features an aeroplane attached to a banana.

“I’m a hoarder; I collect old photographs, paper and ephemera from flea markets and junk shops. I like working with old photographs to change them into something completely different. I work in a very personal way.

“My process begins with my obsession with collecting things thrown away and disregarded as rubbish – these images act as a catalyst for my collages, which are rich in humour and the banal, but also deeply personal. To me, a blank canvas is rarely blank; the papers I use have picked up the marks that only time can yield. A small blotch or ink stain from the original owner is as important as the marks or words that I add myself.

“Collage is something we have in common in our art work. Maybe it’s because we have a similar temperament. We are very methodical and our characters have brought us naturally to work in similar styles.”

WalesOnline is part of Media Wales, publisher of the Western Mail, South Wales Echo, Wales on Sunday and the seven Celtic weekly titles, offering you unique access to our audience across Wales online and in print.